What to expect
Highlights
- Heritage experience at Nithyanandashram
- Architecture, local stories and old trade/cultural routes
- Good fit for guided walks and nearby cafes/shops
The story
The hillside cave complex at Hosdurg, on the southern edge of Kanhangad town, where Bhagawan Nityananda had meditation chambers cut by hand out of a single mass of laterite — 43 of them by the ashram’s own account — with a temple built above them in 1963. It is a place of practice rather than a monument, and mobile phones are prohibited in the caves.
The story of Nithyanandashram
The approach is unpromising: an ordinary road out of an ordinary town, past a polytechnic and a couple of colleges that carry the same name. Then the ground rises into a laterite bluff, and the bluff turns out to be cut. Rows of steps and openings run across the rock face, and behind the openings are chambers — low, dark, cool, deliberately austere — designed as places to sit alone.
The chambers were made under Bhagawan Nityananda, who arrived in Kanhangad in the 1920s. Accounts of the man are thin on biography and thick on incident, which is characteristic; what is not in doubt is the rock. Cutting dozens of chambers out of one laterite mass by hand is an enormous piece of work, and it is the reason the site is remarkable whatever you make of the tradition around it.
Above the caves stands the Nithyananda Temple, built in 1963 — blue-domed, arcaded, unmistakable from the road, and quite unlike a Kerala temple in style. At Onam the ashram courtyard carries elaborate pookkalam flower carpets, which is when most photographs of the place are taken.
It is worth being precise about who this is. The Nityananda associated with these caves is Bhagawan Nityananda, c.1897–1961, who left Kerala for Ganeshpuri in Maharashtra and was the guru of Swami Muktananda. He is not any later public figure using a similar name, and confusing the two is the commonest error made about this place.
The second commonest is confusing it with Anandashram, three kilometres north-east, which is a different ashram with a different founder. Both are in Kanhangad and both were founded within about a decade of each other; they are not versions of the same story.
Read the full history of Nithyanandashram 223 more words
History
Bhagawan Nityananda arrived in Kanhangad somewhere between 1923 and 1927, by the ashram’s own account, and the caves were cut during his time here.
The ashram gives the number of caves as 43. Kerala Tourism and a number of travel sources give 45, and some give 44. We follow the ashram, and note the disagreement rather than choosing the roundest figure.
The Nithyananda Temple above the caves was built in 1963, two years after Bhagawan Nityananda’s death at Ganeshpuri.
The name later attached itself to a cluster of local institutions — a polytechnic, an engineering college, a school — which is why a map search for “Nithyananda” around Kanhangad returns campuses before it returns the ashram.
Why visit
The rock itself. Dozens of meditation chambers cut by hand into a single laterite mass is a piece of work with very few parallels anywhere in Kerala.
It is quiet and it is free. There is no ticket, no guide and no queue.
The 1963 temple above the caves is architecturally unlike anything else in the district — blue domes and arcades rather than tiled Kerala roofs.
It sits within a few minutes of Hosdurg Fort, so the fort and the caves are one stop rather than two.
At Onam the courtyard carries large pookkalam flower carpets, which is the one date worth timing a visit to.
